Star Wars: Shadow Chronicles Episode I
by Nouvel Oblique
Summary: A new epic set in the age of the Old Republic (approximately 5 years before the events of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic). Starring new heroes and villains as a disparate group of adventurers struggle to unravel an ancient conspiracy and save the galaxy from a terrible evil: the Cult of Inner Darkness! (Fair Warning: OCs)
1. Prologue

STAR WARS SHADOW CHRONICLES

EPISODE I:

THE LOST TEMPLE

At the dawn of history the sentient species of the Galaxy gathered together to learn the ways of the Force. Ancient pyramidal arks known as the Tho'Yor carried those who heard its silent call to Tython. Those who came sought to learn the secrets of the universe and mastery over the Light and the Dark. The Force was in balance. The Je'daii were born.

Soon catastrophe struck. The Je'daii split between those who followed the Light Side and those who followed the Dark Side. The Age of the Je'daii came to an end.

Those who followed the Light Side became the Jedi and founded an order of warrior monks. When the Galactic Republic was founded, the Jedi came to their aid. The Jedi and the Republic worked together to bring peace and harmony to the Core Worlds of the Galaxy.

Those who followed the Dark Side were banished to the far ends of space. The Dark Jedi landed upon a world known as Korriban and were worshiped as savage gods by the species known as the Sith. The Sith were rich with Force Potential and soon conjoined with their alien overlords. A great and terrible force was born on the deserts of Korriban.

Armed with vast hosts of warriors and fiendish sorcery, the Dark Side returned from exile led by the Dark Lords of the Sith. Once again, the Jedi rose up to fight them, and the Great Hyperspace War began. Now, the Jedi are closing in on their ancient foes...


	2. Chapter 1: The Great Hyperspace War

Disclaimer:_ I do not own or claim any right to the characters, concepts, and product identities of any works by George Lucas, Walt Disney Company, BioWare, or Dark Horse Comics. I make no money nor gain any commercial advantage from producing a work of fiction, known as_ "Star Wars: Shadow Chronicles," _using terms from the works of George Lucas, BioWare, and Dark Horse Comics. Star Wars and all associated characters, concepts, and product identities and any profit derived from their usage are the property of Walt Disney Company et al._

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><p>The temple stank of incense and sweat. The miasmic clouds of incense unfurled from heavy golden stands where flickering red coals glowed inside beds of white ash. The thick air almost suppressed the stench of emptied bowels. The temple shuddered as another blast rocked the city outside. Chips of red-veined marble fell from the ceiling and dust rained through the air, glittering in the light of a thousand lantern-flames guttering on the walls. Heavy golden chains swayed from the ceiling.<br>Ashas, Dark Lady of the Sith, fingered her long, bronze-hilted lightsaber and inhaled deeply. The heavy cowl of her crimson robe obscured her forehead. Red and black tattoos adorned her carved, bony features. Her eyes were yellow, the whites veined with red, diseased; her pupils dilated and dark as black holes. Her red-painted nostrils flared. Golden filigree in the shape of Sith glyphs and gleaming with rubies edged her robes. Her black boots shone in the lantern-light. Darh Ashas ignored the heat and the stench, standing and monitoring her Force Seers as they crouched in a swaying circle around a nexus of the Force. The Force was concentrated by the prismatic array of angular metal-plated columns arranged using the arcane geometry of Sith alchemy. Darth Ashas could feel the presence of the Force like an electric tingle in the air, a delicate, fluttering spiderweb that traced her finely carved cheekbones and nose, dancing on her eyelashes. The Sith's lupine eyes flashed dangerously as yet another seer collapsed with a strangled groan, blood pouring out of his nose, sweat-drenched robes puddling around her limp form. Darth Ash's long, pale finger tapped the hilt of her lightsaber. Two Massassi warriors, grunting and shuddering, pressed close to the Seer and dragged her limp form to one side. With one swing of their muscular, red-fleshed arms, the dead woman's body was added to tge pile of corpses. Lifeless, brood-drenched faces were half-obscured by tangled limbs and ripped clothes.  
>Another blast shook the temple.<br>The Sith knew they had to hurry.  
>It was the last day of the Great Hyperspace War. The Jedi had won. Darthas Ash could sense it, a vergence in the Force that heralded a new and uncertain future.<br>Darth Ashas was gifted with a terrible precognition of the fate of the Sith if they dared to test the resolve of the Jedi and the Republic. If the Sith dared to pursue, again, their endless desire for revenge. None in the the councils of the Dark Lords had heeded her pleas when Naga Sadow had initiated his foolish jihad against the Jedi and invaded the Republic. And now the Golden Age of the Sith was coming to an end. And now, in orbit, the Republic's fleets blasted the surface of her world, Ashas Ree, into scorched rubble. It took the last strength of her Massassi warriors to keep the point defence lasers and turbolaser batteries operating to defend this temple even as the very crust of the planet was scraped away around them by the devastating, retaliatory bombardment of the Republic. Already, Korriban had fallen, and countless Sith worlds afterwards, the great temples and slave pits, meditation spheres and alchemical academies, all lost. Smoke and dust boiled and lightning flashed in the atmosphere and another world was about to die.  
>Her slaves piled durasteel crates and casks full of bones, perfumes, wines, jewels, and scrolls in the hall, preparing to depart. An elegant, spiny star cruiser sat upon the landing pad at the base of the tower, coolant billowing around hot engines. It awaited but one thing.<br>Darth Ashas had felt it. A vergence in the Force. This was the moment.  
>The Dark Lady of the Sith clenched her lightsaber. It activated with a hissing blast of red energy, casting an unyielding light across her startled Seers.<br>"Fear," she whispered, "Embrace the Dark Side, sisters, or all is lost."  
>And she plunged the shining blade into the back of her a wavering seer. The woman's back arched, orange-white fire bleeding around around the edges of the blade, and Darth Ashas drank in the palpable flush of fear that invaded the circle of Force-users.<br>"Let the Power of the Dark Side flood through us," the Sith sang aloud, twisting the blade and withdrawing it with a flickering whisper of light, the wound sealed behind her, "We must protect the Golden Library at all costs, Library of Thieves, the Darkest Tomes, the Vault of Holocrons," she sang, "Sing with me, Sisters of the Dark Side!"  
>A chant began, a moan, and then first one, cracked voice, then a second, and then a third began to utter the horrid words of a Sith Prophecy.<br>It was as if the Seers shed their voice like a snakeskin and replaced their words with wet, slick, sounds, newborn sounds, a voice from the Netherworld itself.  
>The voice of the Force.<br>Darth Ashas threw back her head and laughed, raising her hands, lightsaber blazing above her head, and cried out, "Yes! The Chosen One comes! The Sith'Ari, Master of the Masterless! I am their Wayfinder! I watch for those to come!"  
>Lightning blasted from her fingers and her slaves cried and screamed as blue and purple electricity slammed into them, carrying them into the air and blasting them around the room. Chips of stone flew from pulverized columns and clouds of incense blew back like rapidly receding clouds.<br>Suddenly the lightning stopped. Darth Ash breathed evenly. She turned to the circle of seers.

When the Dark Lady had finished killing all those who had heard the prophecy, she deactivated her lightsaber with a sibilant crackle of plasma-fire. Sealing the temple doors behind her and activating the ancient Sith War Droids, the Dark Lady alighted aboard her cruiser. The landing ramp sealed behind her, hydraulics humming. In the red-lit interior of the ship, gleaming brass and black panels led her to the cockpit. Rapidly adjusting the controls, the Sith smiled. Her yellow irises gleamed in the cockpit lights, thin, vulpine features curving into a tattooed smile.  
>The Sith had a secret.<br>This war was far from over.

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><p>Klaxons wailed as the Ark of the Jedi lurched out of hyperspace.<br>"Close that was."  
>Jain Seed ignored his diminutive, gray-skinned companion, leant forward to stare at the iron-red planet below. Turbolaser fire flickered on the surface below. He seized his com link and growled, "Stop the assault! We can't afford to kill her!"<br>His comlink chirped. "This is a Republic Navy frequency. State your identity!"  
>"Jedi Hunter Jain Seed," the Jedi said as calmly as he could, "Knight of the Republic."<br>The comlink went quiet.  
>His companion whistled soundlessly. Seed glanced at his young Padawan. Sokar, dressed in a red armoured cuirass and tan robes, small, round lightsaber clipped to his utility belt, was small and stocky. His head only reached Seed's knee. His long, tufted ears flickered and enormous green-yellow eyes blinked. "Too late did we arrive," Sokar said, "Lost our chance, we have."<br>The turbo laser fire stopped.  
>"Perhaps not," Seed growled. The armoured Jedi Knight wore red plassteel bracers, breastplate, and boots on top of a yellow Jedi tunic. He eschewed robes in favour of freedom of mobility. Two lightsabers were clipped to his belt, one hilt longer and thicker than the other. A master duellist, Seed used a lighsaber and a lightsaber shoto. Seed put his hands on his belt. Seed eagerly awaited his next duel with the final Dark Lord of the Sith.<br>The Republic cruisers ion engines burnt blue as they strained to ascend to a higher orbital track above the defences of the planet burning below. As they rose, sporadic turbo laser fire from the surface spattered harmlessly against their shields, energy depleted by the atmosphere.  
>Klaxons aboard the Ark continued to wail as Seed inspected the space battle through a thick, transparisteel dome that formed an exterior observation platform.<br>The Ark was a massive pyramidical starship, ancient beyond measure, that served as a roving headquarters and academy for the Jedi Knights. Seed had appropriated it when the true nature of this war had revealed itself, after the Sith had revealed themselves once again. _And we had not seen it coming! My Master, the Grand Master! Loomustius himself! Seed's hands tightened on his smooth bracers. All was lost…_  
>But the Force was his ally. Seed breathed in and out evenly, trying to centre his mind. But images of the war haunted him. Memories of failure. The Jedi Council had dispatched him to investigate this new threat. He had borne witness to the terror and confusion of the opening stages of the Sith assault. So many outer systems had fallen to the mutant armies of the Jedi's dark brothers—leviathans, worms, and hosts of Korriban zombies. And new threats had appeared as well, the red-skinned Massassi, twisted and tainted by the Dark Side, Sith War Droids, and the terrible, dread-inspiring presence of the Sith Battle Meditation. The Sith had reached Coruscant itself, the bejeweled capital of the Republic, before the Seed had realized the true depth of the threat presented by the return of the Sith. What they had twisted to their terrible purpose. And no one had believed him. Seed breathed in sharply.<br>_The Force is my ally._ He tried to calm his mind.  
>He alone had taken the fight to the enemy—and the tools to do it. The Ark of the Jedi. Seed felt a flash of guilt. "Once this is done," Seed said to Sokar, "We can return to Ossus and report the destruction of the last Dark Lord."<br>"Surprised they will be," Sokar chuckled, "Dead they think you are. And this ship, destroyed it seemed to be. Lost to the Sith it was."  
>"Retaken," Seed growled, "At much cost." He tapped a powered boot on the deck.<br>_To lose a Tho'Yor, that was beyond measure. Our last relicts of Tython, our last connections to the truth, the purity, of our forebears._  
>The starship was a Force Nexus, a Gatekeeper to vast knowledge, a reservoir of power. Seed had only just begun to tap its knowledge. Perhaps it was not yet time… Seed shook himself.<br>"Master, look!"  
>Seed's eyes jerked upwards. A starship was rising from the surface, arcing away from them. The Republic cruisers were too slow, turning too slowly.<br>Seed reached out with his senses—and felt something, a gloating, malicious presence!  
>"Pursue that ship!" Seed roared into his comlink.<br>The starship, obsidian, spherical but for elegant, glowing solar sails flashing out from its sides, taunted him with its speed and maneuverability.  
>Great ion engines began to roar, the Ark vibrating beneath his boots. Seed pressed his hand to the cold transparitsteel—<br>The starship flashed into a streak of light and was gone, escaped into hyperspace.  
>"Match heading and enter hyperspace!" Seed barked, "Order all Republic vessels to follow us at once!" Seed's lightsabers ignited, one golden blade, one shorter blue shoto—"I will find you…" he whispered, blue and yellow light burning on his face, "I will find you and destroy you. The Dark Side and all its adherents. For all the lives you took!" Seed cut into the deck with, superheated metal bubbling and frothing, slashing across the deck in front of him, "For all the Jedi you murdered!" Seed slashed again, flecks of molten steel flicking across the observatory, "I WILL FIND YOU! THE JEDI WILL NEVER STOP!"<br>The Ark of the Jedi jumped to hyperspace.  
>The war was not yet over.<p> 


End file.
